NON- FICTION AUDIO BOOK
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a belligerent samurai and old Japanese tail. Goes once challenged a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and ****. But the monk replied with scorn, You're nothing but allowed. I can't waste my time with the likes of you. His very honor attacked the samurai, flew into a rage and, pulling his sword from its scabbard, yelled, I could kill you for your impertinence! That, the monk calmly replied, is **** startled at seeing the truth in what the master pointed out about the fury that had him in its grip, the samurai calm down, sheath his sword and bowed, thanking the monk for the insight. And that said, the monk is heaven. The sudden awakening of the samurai to his own agitated state illustrates the crucial difference between being caught up in a feeling and becoming aware that you are being swept away by it. Socrates injunction Know thy self speaks to this keystone of emotional intelligence awareness of one's own feelings as they occur. It might seem at first glance that our feelings are obvious, more thoughtful reflection reminds us of times. We have been all too oblivious to what we really felt about something or awoke to these feelings late in the game. Psychologists use the rather ponderous term, made a cognition to refer to an awareness of thought process and made a mood to mean awareness of one's own emotions. I prefer the term self awareness in the sense of an ongoing attention to one's internal states. In this self reflexive awareness, mind observes and investigates experience itself, including the emotions. This quality of awareness is akin to what Freud described as an evenly hovering attention in which he commended to those who would do psycho analysis. Such attention takes in whatever passes through awareness with impartiality as an interested yet reactive witness. Some psycho analysis call it the observing ego, the capacity of self awareness that allows the analyst to monitor his own reactions to what the patient is saying and which the process of free association nurtures in the patient. Such self awareness would seem to require an activated neocortex, particularly the language areas attuned to identify and name the emotions being aroused. Self awareness is not an attention that gets carried away by emotions, overreacting and amplifying what is perceived. Rather, it is a neutral mode that maintains self reflectiveness, even amidst turbulent emotions, William Styron seems to be describing something like this faculty of mind in writing of his deep depression, telling of a sense of being accompanied by a second self. A wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is ableto watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles at its best, Self observation allows just such an equine animus, awareness of passionate or turbulent feelings. At a minimum, it manifests itself simply as a slight stepping back from experience, a parallel stream of consciousness that is Maeda hovering above or beside the main flow, aware of what is happening rather than being immersed and lost in it. It is the difference between, for example, being murderously enraged at someone and having the self reflexive thought. This is anger, I'm feeling, even as you are enraged in terms of the neural mechanics of awareness. This subtle shift in mental activity presumably signals that neo cortical circuits are actively monitoring the emotion. Ah, first step in gaining some control. This awareness of emotions is the fundamental emotional competence on which others, such as emotional self control, build self awareness in short means being aware of both our mood and our thoughts about that mood. In the words of John Mayer Ah, University of New Hampshire psychologist who with Yale's Peter Saleh V is a co formulate er of the theory of emotional intelligence. Self awareness could be a nonreactive, nonjudgmental attention to interstates. But Mayor finds that the sensibility also can be less sequin animus. Typical thoughts be speaking, emotional self awareness include I shouldn't feel this way. I'm thinking good things to cheer up. And for a more restricted self awareness, the fleeting thought don't think about it in reaction to something highly upsetting. Although there is a logical distinction between being aware of feelings and acting to change them, Mayor finds that for all practical purposes, the two usually go hand in hand to recognize a foul mood is to want to get out of it. This recognition, however, is distinct from the efforts we make to keep from acting on an emotional impulse. When we say, Stop that to a child whose anger has led him to hit a playmate. We may stop the hitting, but the anger still simmers. The child's thoughts are still fixated on the trigger for the anger, but he stole my toy and the anger continues unabated. Self awareness has a more powerful effect on strong aversive feelings. The realization this is anger, I'm feeling offers a greater degree of freedom, not just the option not to act on it, but the added option to try to let go of it. Mayor finds that people tend to fall into distinctive styles for attending to and dealing with their emotions.